McAfee to Offer Integrated Security App

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

May 30, 2006, 11:57 AM

McAfee took the covers off a new integrated consumer security platform Tuesday, code-named "Falcon." Under development for the past year, the offering combines the company's antivirus, anti-spyware, and "threat watch" technologies.

The entire suite of products will be manageable from a single access point, which McAfee said was a common complaint in its research. Additionally, the "threat watch" capabilities would be able to proactively act on suspicious activity.

"'Falcon' builds upon McAfee's leadership in making great security and protection nearly transparent to the user and takes consumer security to an entirely new level," product management director Marc Solomon said in the announcement.

Falcon will include technology called SystemGuard, which is behavior-based. It will look for certain behaviors that may indicate virus, spyware or hacker activity, and alert the consumer before the issue does damage. Additionally, X-Ray would detect and kill rootkits, as well as malicious programs that attempt to hide themselves.

The new software also include services to help manage security across home networks. Through the central console, a user would also be able to monitor the security status of other computers on the network. Falcon will assist the user in setting up secure networks as well, simplifying a confusing task for many first-time wireless network users.

Acknowledging that some may want more control and detail, Falcon would provide the standard basic view as well as an option to view more advanced features. The advanced view will allow for greater fine tuning of individual settings, the company said.

"With the launch of 'Falcon' this summer, we have integrated into our award-winning products powerful, yet easy to use protection that addresses both existing and emerging threats," Solomon continued.